A Step Toward Determining Which Car Crashes Cause Traumatic Brain Injury – And Which Don’t
UA researchers are developing a tool to calculate the likelihood of traumatic brain injury after a vehicle collision.
By combining computer simulations with experimental data, aerospace and mechanical engineering researcher Samy Missoum is developing a way to predict the likelihood of traumatic brain injury after a car crash.
Motor vehicle crashes are the most common cause of emergency room visits, hospitalizations and deaths related to traumatic brain injury among people aged 15 to 34, according to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, makes up about 30% of all injury deaths in the United States, and early diagnosis and treatment is one of the most important ways to prevent these deaths.
Aerospace and mechanical engineering professor Samy Missoum, who is also director of the Computational Optimal Design of Engineering Systems, or CODES Laboratory, and graduate student Seyed Saeed Ahmadisoleymani recently published a paper in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering that details a new method for calculating the probability of TBI due to a car accident.
“Unlike with American football or military applications, there has not been much research done into the link between car crashes and TBI,” Missoum said. “We have developed the first steps of a method to assess the probability of TBI based on crash conditions, such as impact velocity and angle.”
Combining Experimentation With Computational Data
TBI research has traditionally involved experimental methods, such as conducting tests on animals or collecting data on football players. Other approaches are purely computational -- for instance, using finite element models, which are mathematical tools to predict how a system like the brain will behave when subjected to external forces.